Mary Lucey Born: March 9th , 1923 Died: December 13th, 2012Dr Mary Lucey, who has died aged 89, was one of the most prominent anti-abortion campaigners of the 1980s and 1990s.
A key figure in the successful 1983 abortion amendment campaign, Dr Lucey was a founder member and one-time president of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child.
Former Fianna Fáil senator and fellow anti-abortion campaigner Des Hanafin described her this week as “very committed to the pro-life cause”.
He said it had been much commented on that Dr Lucey’s funeral took place on the day the Government unveiled its plans to introduce legislation on abortion.
“I am very grateful to her for all that she did. Her contribution was enormous,” he said.
She was born in Salthill, Co Galway, the eldest daughter of Edward and Eileen Ronayne, and was reared on Sandymount Green in Dublin.
She was educated by the Dominicans in Cabra before going to UCD to study medicine. As a student she was involved in the Literary and Historical Society, winning the Best Lady Speaker Prize in 1941. She graduated in 1947, interning in Manchester where she witnessed the beginning of the National Health Service in 1948. In 1950 she married civil engineer Michael Lucey, who joined Irish Life as property manager in 1968.
Dr Lucey loved medicine and returned to her career in 1964 after the births of her five children. She was a dispensary doctor, initially in Larkhill and later in Dundrum. And when she retired in 1984 she was a household name because of her role in the long and divisive campaign which led to the 1983 amendment.
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s she continued to campaign on the issue, calling for the closure of pregnancy counselling centres which provided information on abortion. In 1986 the High Court ruled that the availability of information on abortion outside the State was in breach of the 1983 amendment to the Constitution.
The X case put abortion back at the top of the political agenda in 1992, which was also the year of the referendum on the Maastricht treaty, which Dr Lucey said would be a referendum on abortion. “The Maastricht treaty will sell Irish unborn lives for a mess of potage, for money,” she said.
Friends and family this week said her work on behalf of the poor and particularly the Traveller community, was also an important part of her life. Her interests included history, music and politics. She was a sociable woman who sang and played the piano and loved to entertain. She enjoyed opera and was a regular at the National Concert Hall and was a member of the Newman Society and the Parnell Society. She was also an admirer of the late Fine Gael leader James Dillon.
After she retired she returned to UCD to study history. Dr Lucey travelled widely with her husband and his death in 2000 after 50 years of marriage was a blow. Her last four years at Carysfort Nursing Home were blessed by kindness from family, friends and staff.
She is survived by five children, Catherine, Michael Ronan, Clare, Jim and Frances, 14 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.